Ebony Hill (12 page)

He lifts me to my feet. “Are you all right, lass? I should have seen that coming. I’m sorry. They’re animals.”

“You think we’re any better?” I gasp, my breath coming back in painful gulps. I shake his hands away.

He frowns at me. “Come on,” he says. “Come away. No point trying to help that one.”

I look at the man, tumbled in a heap by the wall, blood trailing from his nose. He’s unconscious, or feigning it. Beneath his tattered tunic I glimpse a stained bandage and shrink from the memory of his blood on my hands. My gorge rises.

“Steady now.” The guard catches me by the shoulder and leads me out into the main cellar, pushing me down onto an upturned crate. A sound from behind alerts us and he turns in time to see the prisoner lurch to his feet and charge towards the open door. The guard takes two quick strides and slams the door, throwing his weight
up against it. I feel the thud in my gut as the prisoner’s body crashes against it. Three solid kicks follow, then silence.

With a muttered curse that questions the para’s mental state and the existence of the universe besides, the guard shoots the bolt and clicks the lock into place.

Tears have begun to crawl down my cheeks.

“It’s all right,” the guard tells me, patting me awkwardly on the arm.

“It’s not,” I tell him, and mean it.

“No,” he agrees. “Probably it’s not.”

When I’ve mastered my foolish tears I look at him squarely. “I didn’t have permission to bring them food, or check their wounds,” I tell him.

He flashes his teeth in a grin. “I never thought you did,” he says.

We stare at each other.

“War’s an ugly thing,” he adds. “Mostly what Scouts do is locate resources. If we come across other communities, they’re usually small, often struggling. We let them know where we are and what we’re about. Try to help them if we can. But this lot.” He makes a noise of disgust. “We’ve known about them for a while, and none of what we’ve heard has been good.”

“It doesn’t make it right, to hurt them like that.”

“If we don’t, they hurt us more. Is that better?” He sees my frown. “We have to find out how many of them there are, where they’re based, how extensive their weapon stash is. The more information we have, the more chance there is that we can protect ourselves against them, and
re-take Summertops without incurring more losses. You understand that, don’t you?”

I nod. It doesn’t seem worth telling him that, even so, I still believe – I have to – that there must be another way.

Truso gathers the community in the meeting room to deliver the news. I sidle in at the last and stand near the door, back tight against the wall.

“You’ve all heard by now that Dales is under attack,” he says. The eyes that stare back at him are bleak. “Brenon believes it might be a ruse. He says that if it was his campaign, he’d use a multi-pronged attack to thin our defences.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I mutter. Brenon strikes me as devious.

“As of now we’re on full alert,” Truso continues, his eyes scanning each face in the room. “Decon are manning the perimeter and strategic points around the out-buildings. We’re responsible for security within the house. You all know the drill. If anyone gets past the scouts, we’ll be ready for them. And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you: no one goes outside, doors remain locked and barred, downstairs windows shuttered. Manet and Catha, you’re in charge of the younger members of the
community. Keep them clear of the upstairs windows – we don’t know how extensive a range of hardware the paras have. Try not to alarm the younger children, but in my view, everyone, no matter how young, needs to know what’s going on. We’re in this together.”

Voices murmur assent, and it suddenly feels true; as though we’ve taken back responsibility for Home Farm. There’s an energy that’s been missing these past days. We’re scared, but we’re fighting for ourselves. For no reason I know, I wish that Ronan was with us.

Despite Brenon’s prediction, the night is quiet, and the next day. Tension builds in the house till it feels thick as honey, as though we breathe it and wade through it, as though it slows our lives to every unexplained sound, every shadow. Tempers begin to fray till even Truso is snapping at each question he’s asked. I spend my time in the hospital dorm and med room until Saice orders me out, saying I have to get some sleep or collapse. I could tell her I’d rather not discover how the last few days have augmented my nightmares; that if I sleep only in short snatches, I needn’t find out. But I don’t.

There have so far been no more bombs and booby-traps. A week ago, when Esha died, I couldn’t have imagined that a gunshot wound would come to seem a relief.

After the arrival of the evacuees from Pinehill, Brenon gave in to pressure and sent a unit of scouts up to Dales – Tan’s unit, or what’s left of them after the bomb on the jigger line, with some of Lynd’s Decon team to fill
the empty places. Saice cleared two of the scouts injured in the blast as fit to go with them. Four more have been allowed back to light duties only, and we’ve four still in our care. As fast as they leave the ward, others come in. Two women from a Decon patrol staggered back to Home Farm early this morning. From a surprise skirmish with a troop of paras, they came out even: two losses to each side. They were lucky in that. Decon have no more than the standard training in hand to hand fighting.

The rumour at breakfast this morning was that the scouts are running low on ammunition. It’s Brenon’s unit that has rifles. Tan’s scouts, like Decon, are armed mainly with crossbows. I asked Farra about them when I was checking his stitches. They’re the perfect weapon for a surprise attack, he told me, though he didn’t say what happens beyond the surprise, when the enemy you’re fighting has rifles and bombs, and I didn’t ask.

“I’d rather deal with injuries from crossbow bolts,” Saice tells me, later. “They don’t do the damage of bullets. Even when they hit bone, they cut clean.”

I say nothing, my eyes on the wound that she’s stitching in our latest casualty’s shoulder.

“It was the stocks of ammunition Tan’s unit was carrying that caused most of the secondary damage in the bomb blast,” Saice says, spitting the words from her mouth. “If they’d not had that – five crates of it, Tan told me – there’d have been fewer deaths.”

Her anger is sharp as the needle that darts in and out of the torn flesh. Suddenly her fingers stop. “Finish this off, would you Ness.” She thrusts the needle towards me.
“Just as I showed you two days ago. The practice will do you good.” Her voice is salty and rough.

With fingers that shake only slightly, I do as she bids. My stitching is ragged compared to hers. I don’t look at her again until I’m done.

“I’m sorry,” she says, blowing her nose with a honk loud as a goose. “Sometimes I just—”

Voices sound in the corridor and Truso strides through the door. The room feels crowded with the agitation coming off him in waves.

“What?” Saice asks, clearing her throat. “What is it?”

I lay a dressing over the wound we’ve just stitched.

“You’ll hear the news soon enough,” Truso says. “There was a sustained attack on Dales last night. One of Tan’s men just got back with a request for reinforcements.”

“But they held them off? Dales hasn’t been taken?”

He turns haunted eyes towards me. “Not when he left. That was in the early hours of this morning.”

“Casualties?” Saice demands.

Truso shrugs. “I don’t know how many or who. But…”

Of course there are casualties. Didn’t Ronan tell me that no one wins in war?

“Did he say whether Ronan and Opi were there?” I ask. “Or whether—”

A shout in the hall cuts across my question. As Truso turns for the door, Saice and I are close on his heels.

“Fire,” someone yells. “The barn’s on fire!”

Smoke mushrooms from the rear corner of the building, the crackle of flames reaching us across the yard as Aiya opens the front door.

“Start wetting sacks,” a voice calls. “Zeek, can you—”

“There’s another fire in the grain store!”

I turn, but others are faster.

“The stable too! The horses – we have to get them out.”

As people tumble into the yard, Brenon’s voice cracks like a whip. “Back inside! It’s a trap. They’re trying to draw us into the open.”

In reply a volley of shots rattles around us. I see someone fall. A woman stumbles back against me – Rys. I hook my hands beneath her arms and drag her back across the threshold. Blood wells from her chest and her eyes look bright with surprise.

Around us feet pound along the hall. I close my ears to the shouts, concentrating on Rys. “It’s all right,” I say. “You’ll be all right.”

Someone pushes a towel towards me and I wad it against the wound. It turns red beneath my hand, like the hanks of wool my aunt Bella would submerge in a tub of dye for weaving on her loom.

“I’ll help you get her to the med room.” The scout opposite me bends to lift Rys’s legs. She gurgles, pink froth bubbling out between her lips.

“Leave her,” I say. “I don’t think we should move her. Where’s Saice?”

“Busy.” Jago drops to his knees beside me and takes up Rys’s hand. It hangs limp in his grasp. “There, Rys. Can you hear me?”

Her eyes turn to him slowly, rolling a little as if she can’t fully focus. Another gurgled sound comes from her,
bringing with it more froth.

“Don’t try to talk,” Jago says gently. “You’ve been shot, Rys. Try to breath slowly now. Don’t talk. Let it go.”

I stare at him, tears welling in my eyes. His attention doesn’t waver from Rys. “You know we beat the paras back at Dales? It won’t be long and we’ll have them out of Summertops too. And here: they’ve no chance here.”

“I uhn—” Rys’s words trail off in a wet gasp.

“You were there for us. Right there,” Jago soothes, stroking her hand. “That’s why we’ll beat them, with people like you on our side.”

Rys’s bright blood seeps up through the towel and wells around my fingers. There’s a quiet croaking rattle in the back of her throat and something is gone from her eyes.

After a moment, Jago releases her hand, laying it gently on her chest. He picks up my own hand and lifts it away. “She’s gone, Ness,” he says.

I can’t tear my eyes away. I’ve seen so much these past days, it makes no sense that one more death should so trouble me.

“Come away now,” Jago says.

Someone takes my shoulder and lifts me to my feet. Someone else drapes a cloth – green with sprays of pink and orange flowers stitched around its border – over Rys’s sightless face. A hand turns my chin and I find my face close to Jago’s. “Our grieving has to wait,” he says. “There’ll be time.” The effort his breaths cost him is greater than it was. “We’ve work to do.”

I blink and look around. We’re under attack. It sinks
slowly into my mind, like a leaf shimmying down through water. My next thought is like a stone. “The stables and the barn: did they get the fires out? And the horses? Was anyone else injured? What—”

“Slowly, Ness. I can’t keep up.”

I sigh out a little smile, but a rifle shot sounds, and another, and I jump. Jago places his hands on my shoulders. “I’m all right,” I tell him. “Where’s Saice?”

“In the med room.”

I glance at Rys and away. There’s a taste of metal in my mouth, like the air at Vidya.

“She might need me,” I say at last.

Jago’s hands steady me. “When you’re ready.”

I swallow and take a few long breaths. Then I lift my chin. Jago turns me by the shoulders and nudges me ahead of him along the hall. We’ve nearly reached the med room when there’s a crash of breaking glass from somewhere in the house above us. A child’s sobbing carries down the stairs. “I’ll see to it,” Jago says, answering my wild-eyed stare.

Saice looks up as I come in. “Wash your hands,” she says.

I stare at the blood that stains my skin like crushed berries, then back at the man on the bed. “Quickly, Ness.”

Her urgency reaches me. I run the water so hot over my hands that one shade of red is replaced with another and my skin stings beneath the scrubbing brush.

Saice doesn’t look up as I join her. The scout has been shot through the shoulder, the bullet shattering his
scapula. A second bullet has torn a shallow gash in his side, re-opening a wound he suffered in the bombing on the jigger line – I remember his wound rather than him. He can barely lie still as Saice tries to staunch the flow of blood. “Shall I mix a sleeping draught?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “We’ve run out. Fold a wad of towel and put it in between his teeth. I have to check there are no foreign bodies in the wound. You’ll have to hold him still.”

I glance at the man’s face and do as she bids. It’s a mercy to us all when he passes out. In the sudden quiet we can hear the erratic sound of battle, which at least tells us that we’re holding our own.

We’ve just secured the last stitch when the med room door slams open. Truso lurches across the threshold, a body inert in his arms. Tenderly, he lays the man down on the room’s empty bed. It’s Stefan, the father of one of the girls whose room I share. He takes care of the community’s horse team and farm machinery. The flesh of his shoulder and neck is scorched white, clear liquid weeping from the wounds, his hands blackened and charred. Along his arm and side his shirt has burned away, or into, his flesh.

“He got the horses out,” Truso says, his voice anguished. “He was unconscious by the time I got to him.”

“You shouldn’t have risked it,” Saice says. “We need you Truso.”

“We need everyone,” he answers.

Saice bends over Stefan. “Ness, the burn salve is on
the top shelf, near the wall. It’s labelled.” She glances up. “At least we’ve still got that. We’ve run out of just about everything else.”

Truso nods.

“You’re bleeding,” she says.

Truso places a hand over his bloodied upper arm. “It’s a scratch.”

“Ness, cut Stefan’s clothes away, gentle as you can. You need to get rid of every last shred of fabric, but try not to damage the flesh. Sit down,” she orders Truso.

When he resists she pushes him firmly into a chair and ignores his protests as she tears away his bloodied sleeve. “This is a gunshot wound,” she says.

“Clean through,” Truso confirms. “The bleeding has mostly stopped.”

Saice scowls at him. “And the infection only just begun. It’s filthy.”

I glance up in time to see Truso pale as Saice probes the bloodied muscle of his upper arm. “There’s something in here,” she says. “Probably a piece of your shirt. Here: bite on this.”

I turn my eyes to Stefan and try not to hear Truso’s pain. The flames have done the greatest damage to Stefan’s neck and hands. His torso is scorched but the damage is mostly to his skin. I smear the burn cream over the wounds, remembering the salve that Merryn made, based – like many of her ointments and tonics – on honey.

As I dab the cream over the edges of the burn on Stefan’s neck, I notice a trickle of blood coming from
his ear. There’s a swelling on his skull just behind it, and another, raised and red, on his chest. I find a similar contusion on his thigh just above the knee. “Saice,” I say. “He has a head wound. I think he might have been trampled.”

She leaves Truso to inspect my discoveries. “It’s possible. The horses would have been panicking.” She probes the head wound and frowns. “We won’t be able to tell how much damage has been done till he comes round.”

I glance at the burns. “Better he doesn’t do that too soon.”

Saice nods. The med room door opens to admit Lynd. “Saice, I need you. One of my men – we can’t move him.”

Saice looks up, her mouth thinned to a line. “Ness, can you finish Truso’s arm? I’ve cleaned it, but it needs stitching.”

My stomach flops. I’ve not done any stitching without Saice looking over my shoulder, and never without the patient having something to deaden the pain. I look at Truso in trepidation. “Go ahead,” he says grimly.

My throat feels dry. Saice picks up her emergency kit and is gone. Turning my back on Truso I wash my hands – they’ve taken on a permanent shade of boiled red.

“The day we arrived at Ebony Hill, you said that smaller communities had had trouble with a para-military group. Are these the same ones, do you think?” I ask, as I swab the wound with alcohol.

Truso sucks breath between his teeth. “Seems likely.”

“What do they want?”

“We don’t know much about them. They’ve not shown any interest in making civil contact.” He grunts as I lay my first stitch. Sweat has beaded on his forehead. And on mine.

“But they haven’t attacked Vidya’s farm community before?”